Mitiga, Splunk, BlackBerry, More Deliver New Cybersecurity Safeguards
MSSPs, get the latest on cloud and BYOD security, plus ransomware and more, in our latest slideshow.
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On the heels of Lightspin’s recent funding round comes news of another for fellow cloud security firm Mitiga.
The Tel Aviv-based startup, which focuses on cloud incident response, has raised $25 million in Series A financing. That brings its total so far to $32 million.
“We have seen firsthand how demoralizing and detrimental slow responses are to cyberattacks,” said Tal Mozes, co-founder and CEO of Mitiga. “The cloud represents new challenges for incident readiness and response. … This funding will allow us to further our engagements with heads of enterprise security who are looking to recover from an incident in real-time, attract even more of the most innovative cybersecurity minds in the industry and expand our partner network. I couldn’t be more excited about what Mitiga is going to do for cloud-first organizations who understand the importance of cybersecurity readiness and response.”
Mitiga delivers emergency response to network security incidents such as ransomware attacks and data breaches. It also provides pre-incident services for hybrid cloud environments. Much of the technology is automated. But the company also offers manual intervention, including experts who help clients’ public relations teams.
The need for cloud security platforms and assistance such as Mitiga’s has grown crystal clear throughout the pandemic.
McAfee, for one, says cloud-based cyberattacks jumped 630% between January and April 2020 alone. At the same time, more people continue to work remotely, circumstances that IBM found have increased the average cost of a data hack by $137,000. That’s because most of the services supporting work-from-home employees revolve around the cloud. These applications and platforms contain untold amounts of valuable corporate data. In addition, various research firms forecast that almost all organizations worldwide will rely on some form of cloud environment by as early as next year. That growing adoption will keep attracting hackers ‘ attention, emphasizing the need for stringent security protections.
ClearSky Security, Atlantic Bridge and DNX led Mitiga’s new funding round.
“The increased speed of adoption of cloud platforms has organizations rethinking how they prepare for and react to breaches,” said Patrick Heim, partner and CISO at ClearSky. “Organizations are moving away from mostly reactive incident response processes. Newer approaches focus on preparing companies for inevitable incidents with a focus on tools and services that enable rapidly restoring operations and limiting impact. Mitiga is leading the way in building out this new discipline of cloud-focused incident readiness and response.”
Mitiga offers its hybrid managed services on a subscription basis.
Cloud security will be a vital area for MSSPs to address from here on out. Splunk is doing its part to help partners meet the need with its new Security Cloud platform.
The big data software company says the product provides the following:
• Advanced security analytics powered by machine learning;
• Automated security operations for faster detection, investigation and response times; and
• Threat intelligence that automatically collects, prioritizes and integrates all sources of information, supporting, once again, faster detection.
Splunk built the software to work across all security tools, regardless of vendor. That’s key, given that most organizations juggle at least a couple dozen brands that don’t talk to each other. The ability for MSSPs to secure and manage customers’ multicloud deployments, all while adapting to changing threats, is essential.
“Organizations need to have the freedom to leverage a combination of solutions for their security needs, hence the reason why we believe our partner ecosystem is so important for our customers, enabling faster solutions for their needs,” said Sendur Sellakumar, chief product officer at Splunk. “As a result, solution providers need to come together to enable a cohesive solution set for our joint customers.”
Data drives better decisions, Sellakumar added. That serves as the foundation for security analytics, a practice that will only keep growing in importance for MSSPs and their clients.
Splunk Security Cloud is available now in the United States. Splunk did not announce release dates for EMEA and APAC.
In addition to launching Splunk Security Cloud, Splunk also has closed the acquisition of TruSTAR.
TruSTAR specializes in cloud-native threat intelligence integration and automation. The company’s platform already works with the Splunk security portfolio but will be more deeply integrated into the Splunk Security Cloud over the coming months.
Splunk says this will allow customers to enrich their SOC workflows with normalized threat intelligence from third-party sources, and from their own historical events and investigations. Overall, that will cut down on the time it takes for customers to detect and remediate issues before they impact the business, according to Splunk.
Splunk did not disclose how much it paid for TruSTAR.
BlackBerry once again is reinventing itself somewhat – and MSSPs directly benefit.
The device maker turned software developer has turned its software and services business into two new units: one focused on IoT, the other on cybersecurity.
The cybersecurity division includes endpoint security and management, critical event management, and secure voice and text.
“Stopping threats before they execute and start doing harm is clearly a better strategy than trying to shut them down afterwards,” Chen said on BlackBerry’s June 24 earnings call, when he announced the change.
One of the critical facets of cybersecurity relates to mobile devices. Organizations have to ensure the airtight nature of their employees’ smartphones, tablets and even laptops. But when they bring their own devices to the network, the job gets more difficult. Layer on top of that the unabating remote work trend and MSSPs have their work cut out for them.
Vendor Bitglass this month released its 2021 BYOD Security Report, which assesses these very issues. The security vendor found that, for the most part, organizations are unprepared to secure BYOD gear. Respondents indicated they’re not only vulnerable to security gaps on BYOD devices, but also completely in the dark on potential security threats.
This presents a big problem, given that 82% of the 271 cybersecurity respondents told Bitglass their organizations enable BYOD in some capacity.
Go to the next slide to read some of the uncomfortable stats Bitglass uncovered.
More than half (51%) of professionals said they have no way of knowing their vulnerability to malicious Wi-Fi on personal devices. This should sound the alarm for MSSPs.
Similarly, almost half (49%) said they were unsure or unable to disclose whether their employee-owned devices have connected to malicious Wi-Fi networks in the past 12 months.
Meantime, 22% of respondents said that unmanaged devices accessed corporate resources and downloaded malware in the last 12 months. On the flip side, 49% did not know or could not say whether that had happened in their environments.
In other words, what you don’t know can hurt you.
Anurag Kahol, CTO of Bitglass, agreed.
“As enterprises begin to shift to hybrid work environments, personal devices will provide the flexibility and remote access that employees require,” Kahol said. “This new way of working, however, will undoubtedly stretch the resources of security teams. This is why there has never been a more important time for enterprises to seriously rethink their approach and secure all forms of communication amongst users, devices, apps or web destinations.”
MSSP Nuspire has added a third security operations center (SOC) to its roster. It’s also the firm’s first international location.
Nuspire, which last month debuted a unique platform for combating cyberattacks, said the new footprint in Manila, Philippines, helps it to better serve customers. The Michigan-based company is running the SOC on an around-the-clock basis, just like its two others in Michigan and Colorado.
“We’re thrilled to introduce our first international SOC and [network operations center],” said Greg Yarrington, chief operating officer at Nuspire. “Our customers’ security is crucial to us, and our expanded global presence allows us to continue delivering exceptional security services to existing clients while opening the door to future growth for Nuspire.”
The Manila team consists of security analyst and engineering staff. Functions include security and network operations, threat intelligence, client onboarding and service implementation, engineering, and logistics and asset management.
Veritas Technologies has beefed up NetBackup with capabilities MSSPs will want to note.
The latest version of the platform features ransomware protection for containerized environments, immutability for Amazon S3 and integrated anomaly detection.
Veritas, which specializes in enterprise data protection, also unveiled the NetBackup Flex 5350 appliance.
“With the increase in ransomware attacks targeting mission-critical infrastructure like oil and gas, health care, telecommunications, and beef and dairy, our newest NetBackup release represents a significant advancement in Veritas’ leadership of backup and recovery solutions by further protecting customers against increasingly prevalent ransomware attacks, irrespective of where their data resides: cloud, containers or on-premises,” said Doug Matthews, vice president of product management at Veritas.
To fight against ransomware, Veritas has added several capabilities to NetBackup, including:
• Anomaly detection driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning that provides alerts and recovers data;
• Continuous data protection and instant rollback for VMware environments;
• Write Once Read Many (WORM) storage extended to AWS S3 cloud environments, supporting compliance requirements while protecting against ransomware; and
• Integration and protection for Kubernetes application data on Red Hat OpenShift, VMware Tanzu and Google Kubernetes Engine.
Veritas also included more in-cloud ransomware safeguards in NetBackup. Those include resource autoscaling, intelligent policies and enhancements to the transport security layer that move data to the cloud faster.
Veritas Technologies has beefed up NetBackup with capabilities MSSPs will want to note.
The latest version of the platform features ransomware protection for containerized environments, immutability for Amazon S3 and integrated anomaly detection.
Veritas, which specializes in enterprise data protection, also unveiled the NetBackup Flex 5350 appliance.
“With the increase in ransomware attacks targeting mission-critical infrastructure like oil and gas, health care, telecommunications, and beef and dairy, our newest NetBackup release represents a significant advancement in Veritas’ leadership of backup and recovery solutions by further protecting customers against increasingly prevalent ransomware attacks, irrespective of where their data resides: cloud, containers or on-premises,” said Doug Matthews, vice president of product management at Veritas.
To fight against ransomware, Veritas has added several capabilities to NetBackup, including:
• Anomaly detection driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning that provides alerts and recovers data;
• Continuous data protection and instant rollback for VMware environments;
• Write Once Read Many (WORM) storage extended to AWS S3 cloud environments, supporting compliance requirements while protecting against ransomware; and
• Integration and protection for Kubernetes application data on Red Hat OpenShift, VMware Tanzu and Google Kubernetes Engine.
Veritas also included more in-cloud ransomware safeguards in NetBackup. Those include resource autoscaling, intelligent policies and enhancements to the transport security layer that move data to the cloud faster.
Managed security service providers know all too well how quickly cybersecurity morphs. Indeed, protecting customers’ environments these days involves far more than connectivity and computers. Instead, it must take into account cloud platforms and environments, mobile devices and even containers.
Here’s our most recent list of new products and services that agents, VARs, MSPs and other partners offer. |
To that point, some well-known vendors have, in only the last couple of weeks, made advancements to meet organizations’ expanded cybersecurity needs. We’ve compiled this slideshow to deliver the latest from Mitiga, Splunk, Veritas and BlackBerry. Along the way, if you’re an MSSP protecting customers BYOD environments, take note of new (alarming) findings from Bitglass. And finally, get the scoop on growth at your MSSP peer Nuspire.
Click the slideshow above for the skinny on announcements germane to your practice.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Kelly Teal or connect with her on LinkedIn. |
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